Telegraph Hill - May 30 2023

North Vancouver Area, West Vancouver, BC
142m

After my spectacular injury off of Wedge Mountain back in March, I spent 3 weeks in the hospital, and another 3 in a hospital bed in my Grandma's living room. After those pretty crappy weeks, though, I finally was allowed to stand and move back home. For the last month since then, I have graduated from "amble around in a big cast and crutches" to "limp around on my own 2 feet", and started living life almost kinda normally.

That is, with 1 big exception: peakbagging! My rehab started at "just moving my body parts at all" and even now isn't exactly what I'd call extreme exercise, so I wasn't ready to start hiking for quite a while. Last weekend, after logging over a week without any walking aids, I took a >6km stroll around town to see if I still had any endurance left to tolerate walking a useful distance, and if I'd suffer afterwards. Thankfully, it was a success, and despite taking longer than I'd have preferred, I completed it without lasting soreness!

So on the 30th, at my most recent appointment with the orthopaedic surgeon who operated on me, I asked what I was allowed to do, and hiking was on the list! A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one. I was told my bones can now handle whatever the rest of my body is willing to let me do, so now I just have to contend with my poor range-of-motion, pain, and lack of strength. In other words, I'm not quite ready for intense peakbagging, but small trash summits are within reach!

In mid-afternoon after my appointment, I was on the North Shore, and trying to figure out what to do for the rest of the day. I was perusing peakbagger.com as I tend to do sometimes, and was reminded of a small trash "summit" in Horseshoe Bay. I also remembered that my Dad was moving out that way soon and I hadn't seen his future home yet, so I had a reason to visit. Last and perhaps most important, I didn't have dinner yet, so I needed to do something about that. So I reached out to Logan, and we decided to go bag the first post-surgery peak, check out my dad's new digs, and grab some dinner in Horseshoe Bay before heading our ways home for the night.

We drove to the switchback on the road right by the trailhead (about 80m), which has room to park a couple vehicles, and started hiking at about 7:00pm. I had my "hiking loafers" and my "emergency hiking pole" from the car, and Logan came with his trusty flip-flops, but given the intensity of the day we figured it was fine not to be arriving with a cavalry of gear.

The hike starts fairly chill, with a well-beaten dirt path through the trees and a light grade, until you get to a gate, which was thankfully open. Here it starts to get slightly rocky, but still very much "walkable".

A couple minutes after crossing through that gate, though, it got steeper and bluffier, and I encountered my first major challenges, as my knee isn't super happy under large amounts of flexion, and my ankle isn't very pleased with non-flat surfaces. But with patience and careful foot placement, I managed to get through without too much fuss.

There are a few paths through this bluffy section, and even a little scrambling (non-exposed) if you play your cards right, but I only used my hands for support a few times going up, and in less than 10 minutes we reached the "false summit", where there was a random metal pole for some reason.

The walk to the true summit is just a couple extra metres of gain and maybe 10 as the crow flies, so in another minute or so, we topped out. Given it took a rather crippled me 10 minutes, a healthy person can probably get up in under 5 if they tried. Not bad for "a peak", even if a small one. The views are pretty great for the effort invested, I have to say.

After taking our summit photos, we went a bit lower toward the west side to get a better view of the water, but I didn't feel like bushwhacking to get to the bottom so we settled for "pretty decent" views.

The way down was pretty uneventful. It was slower because I had to be a lot more careful not to put weight on my ankle in compromising ways and use my hands more to slip down bigger rocks. This was exacerbated by the "cleanup duties" we found necessary, there was a ton of litter on this little trail. It seems if an area is too accessible, some geniuses will find it to ruin it 🙃

We took about 20 minutes to come down, collecting all the garbage below, and that excludes the stuff above we weren't willing to pick up, along with a poop bag (who bothers bringing a doggy bag for poop but isn't willing to take it out with them?), and more. People suck. At least Logan got some free sunscreen out of the deal 😀

After we got down, we went to go check out my dad's new place and then walked to get dinner, which was amusingly a longer walk than the peak itself 😀. Overall, though, while the peak was small, I'm quite happy to be walking again, and to be back in the mountains (maybe hills in this case) where I belong! Hopefully things continue trending upward and I can have posts with more mountain and less filler soon.

GPX Track + Map